My landlord just died. When Crosbie and I went out for our walk this morning there were a couple of police cars parked out front.→[More:]My first thought, to be honest, was that either my neighbor Rick or the new tenant in Sharon's old place had landed in some kind of trouble. When I came back from the walk, there was a balding guy in a suit and a red tie standing on the wrong side of the front porch with what looked like a notepad.

It's my company's anniversary holiday, so no trip up to Redwood City for me this morning. Instead I took my car up to the shop up on El Monte to get a new timing belt. It was about a fifteen-minute walk back. As I got close to the house Rick was standing outside on the street. He'd stopped by my place to tell me, but since he hadn't seen me he was checking to see if my car was there. Turns out that Scott had literally left the building while I was out. That guy in the suit with the red tie? The coroner.

I went inside and gave Sherry a huge hug. Scott's son Eric and daughter-in-law Magda were in the living room, and so was his daughter Elaine. Mike was on his way from Sacramento. I called Sam, the guy who used to live in the other cottage, who's a sort of surrogate son of Scott's; he came over too. I made a giant pot of tea for everyone, brought over some lemon scones (Sherry's diabetic and had forgotten to eat), cleaned a few layers of crud out of the kitchen sink and surroundings, listened while they told a bunch of stories. Somebody got a roll of toilet paper for Sherry, and we all agreed that toilet paper, as long as it's Ultra Soft or similar, is a hell of a lot better than kleenex when times are tough.

Sherry said that she'd reached over to turn Scott over so she could get up. He was cold; she slid his arm under him and the underside of his body was still warm. He'd wet the bed. That was the tipoff, she said. Her father-in-law had done the same thing when he died.

Scott and Sherry were married briefly back in the late sixties? Early seventies? when they were very, very young. Sherry wasn't even eighteen. She wore a burgundy velvet dress and a tiara with a peace sign it it; Scott wore leather pants.

"He still has them somewhere," she said.

"Of course he does," the kids said. "He's never thrown out a thing in his life." Which should be patently obvious to any of you who've walked down the driveway here.

They had a stillborn child together, then Sherry moved back up to Oregon and they divorced. Both of them raised families separately; both of them have grandkids now. A few years ago, Scott headed up to Oregon to buy something to do with the camper top for his truck, and stopped in on Sherry's brother, who's an old friend. Sherry was there; they just started talking and didn't want to stop.

Last month Scott threw a 70th birthday cookout in Rengstorff Park. Dozens of people showed up. Crosbie and I sat with Sherry; Sam and his girlfriend Rosanna walked over and joined us. Sam was wearing a straw flat cap just like Scott's. Scott drives down every few years to some special hat shop in Pacific Grove when his current one gets banged up, but Sam found his at Mountain View Surplus, of all places. He'd even bought a few extras for Rosanna to take to her relatives in Taiwan.

The Moroccan gate at the opening to the passage back to my cottage finally has a hook on it. I'd been pestering Scott for months about a latch. Meanwhile I'd been using the upward pressure of a bent plank propped underneath the gate to hold it in place. That was unworkable for guests; you needed to understand the weight of the gate and the feel of the plank, or you'd be fiddling with it for five minutes. I was getting exasperated. Finally, two days ago, he re-hung the gate with longer bolts and attached not a proper latch but at least a hook and eye. It's chrome, which looks awful, and it's attached with ugly screws that stick out. I was glad it was done, but frankly I was annoyed about that too.

I'm sitting outside at the little blue table in the courtyard. Crosbie's out here with me on his striped pillow. Estela's inside mopping. As we say in French, I don't want to derange her. When she's done I'm going to make a huge pot of soup: smoked turkey with yellow split peas. Sherry doesn't need to be worrying about what to feed all the people who will be swarming around over the next few days.

A week or so ago, when I stopped up by Scott's place to pick up a package, Scott was sitting at his desk next to the door, grinning. "I've just spent all day arguing with people on the Internet," he said. It occurred to me as I was writing that last paragraph that I'm a champion snoop, and maybe I could find it. I didn't. I did, however, find this youtube clip (incl. straw flat cap). Plus this little photo essay, which I think I linked to back when it came out.

Going to take Crosbie out for another walk in just a few minutes, I thnk.